She didn’t need to ask how the meeting had gone. The deep furrow between William’s eyebrows was report enough. She reached for the hand that hung slack at his side and gave it a squeeze. His hand lay in hers as if he hadn’t noticed, and she let it go.
“Well!” Christopher cheered as they stepped out into the desultory afternoon light. “I say we salvage the day with a trip to our famous cliffs!”
“Did it go really so poorly?” Nora asked William.
His chest and shoulders rose, a sigh and a shrug at once. “MacDougal likes the idea. He ate up everything I gave him and wanted more. But he won’t work with me or Scot-Western, or any American company. He wants to buy the equipment from us and dig the tunnel himself.”
Christopher clapped his hand over William’s shoulder. “And that’s something, Will. That must be a massive sale. Your father will be thrilled. It’s the best meeting you’ve had in all of England.”
Another heavy, heaving sigh. Nora understood, if her brother didn’t. It wasn’t the business that had captured William’s interest, or the profit. It never had been. He loved the project—the idea, the plan, the potential. He loved the discovery and the progress, the promise of a future no one else had realised. And now, someone else meant to take his work and stake his claim. It hadn’t been his best meeting, it had been his worst.
She squeezed his hand again, and this time, he squeezed back and held on.
“They are impressive, I’ll give you that.”
“They stand for the stalwart English spirit,” Christopher explained. “We won’t be moved if we don’t wish to be.”
A bleak puff of sound that might have been a laugh left William’s lips.
The three stood in a row at a vista point atop the cliffs, where the coast dipped into a shallow cove and arced back out to the Channel again. The breeze had become a wind, and the sky had darkened to stormy grey. The cliffs glowed eerily bright against that gloom. The water, stirred by the gusts, roared as it chopped at their base. Christopher was right—the cliffs were a metaphor for the English spirit: rigid, suspicious, and impervious to change.
As they watched, a rock fall started across the cove—at first, just a few white pebbles tumbling down the sheer face, then a few more, and then, suddenly a narrow rush, like a stony waterfall, straight into the water, where the chalk was devoured in a foam roil. Not even the White Cliffs of Dover could withstand the workings of time. The earth crumbled, and the world moved on.
Matthew Arnold’s poem came to Nora’s mind, and she began to recite the last stanza: “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another! for the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams, / So various, so beautiful, so new, / Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain …”
At her side, William picked up the last lines and recited them with her: “And we are here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
They finished and simply stared at each other. In William’s eyes, Nora saw love for her, and need. She saw, too, that he had lost his hope—in his work, but also in them. His confidence in being able to win her father over was crumbling like chalk into the sea.
Before either of them could speak, lightning cracked through the sky, into the Channel, and thunder pounded hard and long above them, like war drums. The dark skies opened wide, and all the water in the heavens seemed to rush down at once. William grabbed Nora and pulled her under the paltry shelter of his coat, and the three ran pell-mell to the open car.
The downpour settled in to stay, precluding the party from returning to Tarrindale that night. Glad that their father was too far away in London to fret that they wouldn’t make it home, they took rooms at a coastal inn. It wasn’t the kind of establishment that normally catered to the noble class, and Christopher muttered about the low ceilings and hard chairs, but Nora liked it—it was clean and dry, when they were muddy and wet, and the innkeepers treated them like royalty, without knowing who they were.
After stoking up the fire to make them warm and dry in their bedraggled traveling clothes, and serving them a rich meal of roast beef, potatoes, and peas, with warm brown bread and excellent tea, the innkeeper’s wife showed them upstairs to what she assured them were “the best rooms in all of Dover, yes they are,” three rooms taking up the whole of the first floor.
She showed Nora into her room first, and it was nice—small and crowded with ungainly old furniture, but clean and cozy. The inn had electricity, and three glass lamps, humming quietly, made a sharp yellow light. The woman showed her each of the room’s humble amenities with a flourish, making a particular fuss over the private water closet. A room with a large bathtub was shared among all the rooms on the floor.
Nora thanked the woman and assured her that she had no other needs. Christopher kissed her cheek, and William gave her a quiet, gallant nod, and then she was closed in the room on her own.
She tossed her ruined hat on the seat of a chair, unbuttoned her rumpled coat and dropped it to the floor, and stood there, in her rain-stiffened clothes, surrounded by blood-red Victorian upholstery and heavy carved wood. Outside the windows, the storm crashed on.
It wasn’t late; if they’d been home, they would still have been in the drawing room, perhaps starting a game or listening to music on the Victrola. Was she meant to go to bed so early, or to sit alone up here with nothing to do while the men went down to the pub, as Christopher had suggested to William during dinner?
Well, absolutely not. Determined to demand that the men include her in their evening, she went to the mirror that stood near the windows and checked her appearance—and knew at once she’d be going nowhere. She couldn’t believe she’d sat in the inn’s dining room in such a state.
Her hair was a snarled nest, and her blouse looked as though it had been wadded up and stomped on before she’d worn it—or perhaps while she’d worn it. She worked the pins out of the tangle on her head and managed to get her hair down and somewhat arranged, and she could manage, perhaps, a braided chignon in the morning, but her clothes—without Kate, she hadn’t a clue how she’d make something presentable of this mess, and she had no other clothes to wear.
The next problem occurred to her: she didn’t know how to undress herself. Kate had fastened her into a corset that morning, and the laces tied at the middle of her back. The buttons in front were tiny and purely decorative. Kate had a way of tying a corset that ensured the laces would never undo when they oughtn’t. And her blouse buttoned at the back as well, more than a dozen tiny pearl buttons. Could she even reach them all? She tried—no, she could not.
She would have to sleep in her clothes. In her corset.
Distress gathered steam in Nora’s chest and made her heart chug. She couldn’t even undress herself. She was exactly as helpless as all the men around her seemed to think she was, dependent on others for every moment of her life.
No—that wasn’t true. She could manage her own clothes when she dressed as she wished. It was the cage of the corset, the proper ladies’ garment, that had her trapped. In breeches, she was free. She was dependent because Society demanded that she be.
Well, enough of that.
Still, there was the problem of the corset for this night. Sleep would be impossible in it. She supposed she’d have to go down and find the innkeeper’s wife and hope that ‘lady’s maid’ was one of the services available. If it was, she could ask for the same help in the morning.
Wait—no. A better idea occurred to her. A defiant idea. A willful idea. Wicked, even. Oh, yes. A very good idea. Possibly brilliant, depending on the outcome. Here they were in Dover, miles from home, miles from Society, where no one recognised her, or William. Here, they were anonymous. They were free.
Flush with the power of wanton rebellion, Nora grinned and opened the door.
There were two other rooms on this floor, plus the bathroom and a maid’s closet. The maid’s cl
oset was easy to discern; the door was plainer than the others. The bath was situated in the middle of the corridor, and the door was open, so she had no trouble setting that one aside as well.
Two doors left. One of them was her brother’s room, the other, William’s.
There was no risk in any regard. If Christopher answered the door she tried, she’d be faced with her brother. No shame in that. Of course, he meant to go out into the rain and enjoy what delights Dover had to offer, and he might already have left. William might have gone with him, though his mood had been quiet and unsocial at tea, still churning with the disappointment of his day.
She picked a door and knocked.
When it opened, William stood there, his coat, tie, and waistcoat off, but this time, his shirt was still buttoned. Pity. One of the best memories of her whole life was the sight of his chest showing through the space between the plackets of his open shirt. Strong and contoured, covered lightly with curls of dark hair across his chest and down the centre of his belly in a narrow line that disappeared into his trousers.
The frown he’d been wearing all day deepened, and he took a step back. He seemed determined to be a gentleman, even twenty-five miles from home in a country inn where no one knew who they were. “Nora, no.”
“I need your assistance.” She grabbed his hand and pulled.
He stood firm and moved not at all. “Nora, I can’t—you test my strength. I need some distance, or I’ll do something we both regret.”
“And what would that be, Mr. Frazier?”
As always, he winced when she used his surname like that. At home, she’d begun to call him William even in her father’s hearing; he’d become a member of the family in the Earl of Tarrin’s eyes, and his given name was now appropriate. Since then, she deployed the name ‘Frazier’ only when she meant to make a point.
“You know.”
She did know, and knowing made it all the more aggravating. She set her hands on her hips and stared up at him in challenge. “You make two unwarranted assumptions: one, that you could do something I wouldn’t want, and two, that I would regret what you want to do.”
He blinked. “Nora …”
“I need your assistance, William. Please come.”
When she tugged on his hand again, he took a cautious step into the corridor and closed his door. She led him to her room and drew him inside. Once they were safe behind her closed door, she locked it and turned back to him.
“This is a terrible idea,” he said. “Your brother will turn on me if he thinks I’m treating you badly.”
“You wouldn’t treat me badly, though, would you?”
“Of course not.” He blew out a breath and looked around the room. “What assistance do you need?”
“I need help undressing.”
“What?” His eyes went wide, but Nora was undeterred. In fact, she liked this, to be the one in charge while he stood by, shocked and wary.
“My corset. I can’t unfasten it on my own.”
“Nora, no. My God. I can’t—no.” He turned to the door. “I’ll have a maid sent up or something.”
“I’m not naked under it, William. I would have thought you’d undressed enough ladies in your day to know that. I’m not asking you to ravish me, only free me.” She wasn’t sure she’d refuse a ravishing, actually, but they’d take on that topic when the time was right.
His eyes narrowed, and his mouth opened, just slightly. “Do you know what you do to me?”
She did; this encounter had reminded her, after all the days of his distance. In fact, she thought she understood that distance at last. Had he stood back because he wanted her so badly? Oh, she liked that. She could forgive him for that.
But a question had arisen, one that had vexed her now for weeks. “If I asked you a delicate question, would you answer me directly?”
“I would try, yes.”
“Why do you want it so much?”
“It?”
“You know, sex. Why does it drive you so hard, the need for it?”
“I’m not sure I agree that it drives me so hard. I’ve gone without it now for some weeks. More than a month.”
That didn’t seem so long to Nora. He’d been in bed with another woman only a fortnight or so before he’d professed his love for her? Hmpf. “You, and men in general. I don’t understand why it’s so appealing to you.”
He laughed—openly, raising his face to the ceiling. “You drag me into your bedroom and ask me to undress you, and you say you don’t understand the appeal of sex?”
“Don’t laugh at me. It’s an honest question. I don’t understand.”
His eyes became slits again, and his head tipped to one side. He studied her like a puzzle he almost had solved. “My darling Nora. I’ll answer. But may I ask you a delicate question first?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded.
“Have you ever touched yourself?”
The question surprised and embarrassed her. “What?”
“The sensitive parts of your body. Your breasts, between your legs.” His voice had got slow and husky, and his eyes had dropped to the parts of her he described.
She felt her cheeks flame bright, but she answered. “Of course I have.” Though she wanted to be strong and assertive, a woman in charge of her own power, her voice barely made sound. “I … was disappointed.”
William smiled and met her eyes again. “If so, it’s because you don’t know how.” Stepping close, he picked up her hand. “Do you want me to show you? Would you regret that?”
He’d wrested control of the encounter, but Nora was too shaken to do anything about it. “I don’t understand.”
He turned her hand and traced the lines on her palm. The tickling touch made the muscles at her centre clench and release. “I haven’t stopped thinking of you for months. Then you came to my room at Tarrindale, and since then I’ve been tormented by the memory of you in my arms, your body so warm and free and close to mine. But I won’t take your virginity before we’re married, Nora. I won’t put you in the position of having to lie to your father about something like that.”
Her father had never once mentioned sex to her, in any context, even before he’d decided she should be a proper lady. He wouldn’t even discuss the birth of animals in her presence. “Why do you think he’d ask?”
“I don’t know that he would. But I know men like him, full of honour and tradition, and I know how he’d feel if you weren’t a virgin when you married. I don’t want you to have to lie if he asks.”
He was right, of course. She couldn’t imagine her father asking such a thing, but if he did, the shock might well kill him, and she wasn’t a very good liar in any case. Besides, Nora wasn’t sure she wanted to lose her virginity before marriage. She wanted William—she wanted to rip his clothes off right now, her body didn’t seem to care that sex would be disappointing—but the thought of giving away the very thing she was supposed to hold more precious than anything else loomed too large and frightening to confront. “All right,” she finally answered. “But I still don’t understand what you mean.”
His hands had worked their way up from her palm, and now he traced his fingers over the soft skin of her forearm, from the hem of her sleeve, just below her elbow, to her wrist. That innocent touch left trails of lava behind, burning away its innocence and leaving blatant, erotic need behind. “I would like to show you how to touch yourself.”
“What?” The word was only air, lost in the storm beyond the windows, but William understood.
“You want help undressing. I’ll help you get your corset off. We’ll stop there, and then I’ll show you.”
The storm outside had a burst of temper, and lightning and thunder shook the windows. Nora wondered if perhaps God had offered his opinion on the matter between them.
She didn’t care about God. Or her father, or anything or anyone not in this room. Every part of her throbbed and thrummed for the man before her. “Will … “ The words go
t stuck in her suddenly muddy throat. She swallowed and tried again. “Will you touch me?”
His lids drooped heavily over his eyes, and he took another step, erasing what was left of the distance between them. She craned her neck to look up into those sleepy, sensual orbs. In this light, they were burnished gold.
“Would you like me to?” he asked, reaching around her and putting his fingers to the top button of her blouse, at the nape of her neck.
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
“Then I will.” He bent and covered her lips with his. As his tongue searched every part of her mouth, his hands worked the pearl buttons of her blouse—expertly, without a pause, as if he spent his days disrobing women. Nora set such thoughts aside and instead hooked her arms around his neck, arching into his kiss, his touch, his heat.
When her blouse was open, he pulled it free of her skirt, then tugged it from her arms and tossed it away. He opened her wide leather belt and tossed it in the same direction. Her skirt was next, falling into a heap around her ankles, which were still closed into the leather of her boots.
Now, she was down to her corset, vest, drawers, and stockings, and Nora realised, perhaps too late, that she would lose her stockings when William removed her corset.
William, however, had clearly not missed that fact. Ending their kiss, he helped her step over the mound of her skirt, and then dropped to his knees before her, unfastening her garters with a hand at each leg, taking each fastening singlehandedly. When the sturdy stockings slipped to drape over her boots, he lifted one foot, unbuttoned the boot, and slid it off, taking the stocking with it. Then he did the other. She stood barefoot and barelegged before him, and he slid his strong hands from her ankles up her calves, to the hems of her drawers, before unfolding gracefully back to his feet.
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